Housing elevates CFO Mani Rangarajan as chief business officer

Housing elevates CFO Mani Rangarajan as chief business officer

Realty portal Housing.com has elevated chief financial officer Mani Rangarajan as chief business officer. As head of business operations, he will lead Housing's broker sales efforts, among other responsibilities. For the time being, however, he will continue to oversee financial operations, it said in a statement.

He has been serving as chief financial officer since October 2015.

"We are pleased to announce Mani's promotion as chief business officer. He was asked to lead the monetisation efforts which have been effective and it is now time to formalise these responsibilities," said Jason Kothari, CEO of Housing.

Rangarajan is a Silicon Valley veteran with over 20 years of experience in the internet and financial services sectors at companies such as Yahoo and Citigroup. His experience spans finance, operations, strategy, business development and corporate development in more than 25 countries in the Americas, Europe, Middle-East, Asia and Africa.

Rangarajan, who is a Cost & Works Accountant, holds an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He is also an alumnus of IIM Kolkota.

In a recent interaction with Techcircle, Kothari said the company is looking to raise more funds, after raising $15 million in a bridge round from SoftBank. It has held talks with Chinese investors and has been in the news for merger talks. Kothari had earlier denied holding merger talks with e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal and Mumbai-based Square Yards.

Housing has seen a senior-level churn over the past year since the ousting of co-founder and CEO Rahul Yadav in July last year after he engaged in public spats with investors. Kothari was appointed CEO in November 2015 while Mani Rangarajan was brought in as chief financial officer and Nikhil Rungta was made chief marketing officer.

In May 2016, Housing appointed former KPMG director Dilip Tuli as senior vice president for strategy and new business and former Amazon executive Ashish Laghate as assistant vice president of product.

Of the 12 IIT Bombay alumni who founded Housing in 2012, only three remain with the company—Amrit Raj, head of digital marketing; Jaspreet Singh Saluja, who heads data operations; and Snehil Buxy, chief product officer.

Four co-founders had left the startup in 2014. In March this year, co-founder and former board member Advitiya Sharma resigned to start Genius Learning Lab, an edu-tech venture. In April, co-founders Abhishek Anand, Ravish Naresh and Sanat Ghosh also quit the realty portal to start their own venture.